


The In-Between

by Settiai



Series: The Land of Ravens [8]
Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game)
Genre: Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition, Gen, One Shot, Resurrection, Tal'Dorei Campaign Setting, Temporary Character Death, The Land of Ravens
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-10
Updated: 2020-11-10
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:20:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,825
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27491110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Settiai/pseuds/Settiai
Summary: Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
Series: The Land of Ravens [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1163504
Comments: 2
Kudos: 3





	The In-Between

The pain was immeasurable. Or, at least, it had been... hadn't it?

Arian opened his eyes slowly, his head tilting downwards to look towards his middle. The last thing he remembered was seeing the lower part of his body slowly turning to ash. Now there was a black spot there, dark and ominous looking, but _whole_.

Still, anything was better than what he'd just seen moments before, his own skin crumbling away as he watched.

The scars on his chest looked better too, now that he was looking at them. They looked healed, or at least restored to a level he was certain they should never have been able to have achieved, not considering how little they'd been looked after since partway through his recovery time in Geldgrove.

Something was off. Something had happened.

It was at that exact moment that Arian realised that he felt almost weightless. Looking down he saw... he saw...

... well, for a moment he wasn't certain exactly what it was that he saw.

His feet were suspended in nothing, somehow floating but yet not at the same time, and he took a moment to simply take that in. There was darkness surrounding him, ever present and never ending. This was almost familiar. Not, not almost. This _was_ familiar. It reminded him of Vasselheim, of the one time he'd waded into the blood pool at the temple of the Raven Queen. It had felt exactly like this.

But this time there hadn't been a pool. Had there? No, there hadn't. No temple. No pool. No blood. They'd been in the Abyss. They'd gone to explore that room, him and Aritian and Zallar, and... and...

"Oh, right. I'm dead."

The words sounded as if they were coming from far away, an echoing quality to them almost as if they were bouncing off of invisible walls that he couldn't see. Despite the fact that he was certain they'd come out of his mouth. Well, mostly certain.

"You are In-Between, Arian Springrise."

The sudden reply made him startle and spin around towards the source of the voice. A distant part of his mind pointed out how odd it was to be able to jump and turn while seemingly suspended in thin air, but he pushed that thought to the side. For now, at least. There were more important thoughts to have just then.

He almost expected his heartrate to speed up too, to feel the thumping in chest shift into a staccato beat rather than something slow and steady. Except now that he was paying attention to it, he realized that he couldn't feel his heart beating, not slowly or quickly or any way at all. Which made sense, all things considered.

But Arian had other things to worry about just then.

The words he'd heard had been much more grounded than his own. Solid. Coming from a single location instead of dancing in the air like a song without notes or a melody. The voice hadn't been familiar, not in a way that made him think that he'd heard it before, but there'd been something about it that tugged at his memories like a ripple in the water.

There was a man standing there. Or, at least, what looked like a man. A figure of some type. He was clad in leathers and wore an elegant cloak of black feathers. His face obscured by a white raven skull mask which came down to just above his mouth, and Arian could see a hint of long, dark hair coming down over his shoulders.

Arian had a sneaking suspicion that he knew exactly who he was face-to-face with.

"I remember Eryth talking about you," Arian said slowly.

This time, his words seemed more solid. They still echoed somewhat, but they didn't seem to swim around him in the air quite as much. They stayed close rather than bouncing off far away walls.

"You let her borrow your dagger." The more he spoke, the more normal his words seemed to become. The more real. "What do you mean I'm In-Between?"

The figure remained silent for a few moments. Or perhaps it was for a lifetime. It was difficult to tell.

"Some people need time to accept their own death, while others do not," the figure said finally. "The In-Between is a place for those who do to have their thoughts answered."

Arian focused on those words. "I guess there are a few questions from my side," he said slowly. "This is what Or—" He stopped, weeks upon weeks of habit stopping him from saying the name even now, in the one place where it was probably safe to do so. "That is, what _he_ wants, right? He wants this moment of death?"

The figure nodded. "He'd be able to stop anyone from moving on. They wouldn't be able to move past here, which why the world needs you all to stop him."

Arian sighed and went to take a deep breath, only to realize just then that he hadn't even been breathing. He shook his head, pushing _that_ particular realization to the side for a moment.

"Well, I think you mean _them_ now." He couldn't quite hold back the sad smile that he felt his mouth twisting into. "I don't think there's much else I can do for the fight at this point."

The figure smiled and took a step closer, bridging the gap between them. "I'm not as certain."

A wave of _something_ rushed through Arian, almost as if all of his senses were being assaulted at the same time. He felt more than heard an achingly familiar voice – Aritian's voice – as if it was running through his skin and his bones and his mind, almost like a current of lightning or a burst of flame or a cone of ice.

_"And I can't wait until tomorrow!"_

It was more than just words. It was a plea. A prayer. A call for intervention. It felt like an anchor attached to his chest, holding him in place and yet tugging at him at the same time.

"What was that?" Arian asked, startled, his eyes darting towards the figure.

The figure's smile was still there, but Arian couldn't help but think there was something almost bittersweet to it. "I think that's them. You're still wanted, it seems." The figure paused for a moment before giving him a slight incline of the head, not quite a nod but close. "Of course, nothing is stopping you from moving on if that's what you choose to do. It's your decision, after all."

Moving on. Arian almost physically recoiled at the words. They felt like a punch to the face and a knife in his gut at the same time. How dare he? How _dare_ he!? There was _so much_ stopping him from moving on. He had his sister and nephew to save. He had his family to get back to. He couldn't leave them in the Abyss, to face that monster alone. Not when they were so close that he could hear them.

He had **_his wife_** to go back too.

There was suddenly a laugh coming from just in front of him, warm and deep and full of amusement. And it immediately shook Arian back into focus.

"What's so funny?" he snapped, turning his attention back towards the figure in the form of a glare. "There's nothing _funny_ about being here right now when my fami—"

He cut off abruptly when the figure raised a hand, reaching out to gently gripping Arian's shoulder with a quiet "hush." It was barely more than a whisper, but it somehow was enough to stop his rant in its tracks.

"What's funny," the figure said gently, "is that people never notice when their internal thoughts start spewing out of their mouths."

Arian could practically feel his face flushing red with embarrassment. Which he didn't quite understand considering he was fairly certain that he didn't have a blood flow just then, what with the lack of a beating heart, but he was also pretty sure that thinking about it would just give him a headache. If he could even get headaches without—

—and he really had much, much, _much_ more important things to focus on just then.

"Well," he said a bit awkwardly, "if I was talking out loud, then you know why I can't just move on. But I was turned to ash. To dust. I was disintegrated, and we've never had enough money to pay the cost for that kind of resurrection."

"You may not have," the figure agreed, "but I think that some of your allies might have prepared for such a moment."

Without warning, the light around them shifted drastically. The darkness was suddenly broken by a brilliant gold light that was coming from somewhere behind Arian, washing over him like a beacon. He could almost feel it.

The figure leaned forward a tiny bit more so that he could whisper into Arian's ear. "Don't look directly behind you," he said, his words as clear as a bell, "and focus on the words. This won't be easy from either side."

He moved his hand away from Arian's shoulder and took a step backwards.

Focus on the words. Right. He could do that.

Arian took a breath that he didn't need, and he let his eyes close, trying to focus on whatever words it was that the figure was talking about.

It didn't happen right away. It might have been a minute or an hour or a year or a century, but Arian didn't have any time reference to base it on. Time passed. That's all he knew. Then, just like that, his senses were bombarded once more. But this time Arian was ready for it.

Mostly.

He heard the sound of something pouring out onto the ground. It wasn't fast, like something that was accidental. It was slow and clearly deliberate. Then he smelled the familiar scent of writing ink much more intensely than he ever had before.

And he heard Zallar's voice.

It sounded distorted, like it was coming from underwater. Or maybe Arian was the one who was underwater. Or if not completely underwater, then maybe he was swimming, his head coming up and down as waves crashed over him. Even with him focusing as hard as he could, some of the words were getting lost no matter how hard he tried to hear them.

But not all of them. He could hear some of them. Words about books and knowledge and all of the very Zallar things he'd come to love about Nothrim's almost dad. Zallar was leagues better than his own father had ever been.

And then it was ending, the words coming to a close, Z's last few words coming through with a clarity Arian hadn't expected.

_"Your story hasn't been written yet. Your story hasn't been finished yet. And when it is, you'll be more than the ink on the page. While I'm not your dad, we are family."_

Arian couldn't help but silently laugh to himself, letting all of the complicated emotions he was feeling wash over him. Along with it there was a small but very real tug somewhere in the enter of his chest, that anchor he'd felt earlier digging in even deeper. It was pulling him toward the light, a little bit at a time.

He opened his eyes for a moment, looking down at himself and being careful to heed the warning not to look directly into the light. And saw a thin, shining, golden thread there. Directly above where his heart was. It was thin but strong, and it was so very, very bright.

He closed his eyes again and forced himself to refocus, to listen as closely as he could. And it took everything he had not to lose himself again when he heard the soft voice of Eryth ( ** _his wife_** , his mind chimed in, still a bit giddy to be able to use that word to describe her even now). Her words filled his ears and his heart and mind and his body and everything there was that made him _Arian_ , resonating deep inside him like a missing piece of his soul.

Tears welled up in his eyes, falling before he even knew they were there, and he made no effort to stop them. He was too busy trying to grasp the words before they were lost to the black void around him. She was talking about their plans for the future, the ones they had made in the middle of the long nights and in stolen moments during their lessons. The story they hadn't even had a chance to start.

Gods, it hurt to have all that cut so short.

"All I wanted to do after all this was over was be with you, Eryth," he said. Or maybe he just thought it. He wasn't quite certain. Maybe there wasn't a difference, when it all came down to it.

Her words pulled on his heart so deeply, talking about the family they'd finally made for themselves and the good they wanted to do. And then her language shifted, the words somehow becoming even more heartfelt.

_"I can't do that by myself. I mean, I guess I can technically, but I don't want to do that by myself. I need you here, an'melda."_

The light that was surrounding him was distorted by the tears in his eyes, but he could still see it glowing ever so brightly. It was clearly getting stronger. It wasn't just a single thread, not anymore. It was a multitude of threads spinning together to create the beginnings of a rope, one that was keeping him connected to his family.

Eryth's words stayed with him, echoing through his mind, but the light didn't fade or grow stronger. It just stayed as it was, holding itself in place.

Had something gone wrong? Arian forced himself to push the doubt away, trying his best to refocus on being with his family again. He'd assumed that Eryth would be last to speak, that he had missed the rest of what Aritian had said before he'd heard Zallar, but maybe not. Maybe he had been wrong.

Barely a moment after that thought filled his mind, he heard Aritian's voice again. His brother-in-arms right from the start. The smell of nature filled his nose and everything else about him as Ari started talking about an acorn. About _the_ acorn. That stupid acorn joke Arian had made twice on the very first day they'd met.

It felt so long ago.

The tugging in his chest got even more forceful as he listened to Aritian's words, one of his first friends speaking about how his family – _Arian's family_ – still needed to be saved. How they should spend time with Ari's parents at their home after Nothrim finished their work and everything was done. A plan for the future. That sounded nice. 

And that's when the music started. It filled _everything_. Not just his heart and his mind and his body, but the whole space. The darkness and the light and everything in between. It was achingly beautiful.

"That's another reason I need to go back," Arian said, or maybe he just thought it. It was so hard to tell. "We haven't played music together in so long."

Ari's voice echoed his own thoughts and words a mere moment later. Arian wished that he could focus on the words, but the feelings and the memories and the beautiful music that he could still hear and feel and _see_ clouded most of it.

Most, but not all. _"I need my brother back."_

Those final words echoed around him, but it wasn't like before. It wasn't a distant echo, the sound of something fading. It was loud, and it was close, and it was all around him. The world shifted, winds and light and love pulling him back to where he needed to be.

He couldn't rest yet.

He didn't want to rest yet.

Arian took a step forward. And then another. And another. Step after step, he walked towards the light that was surrounding him, the thick, solid, golden rope almost pulling him off his feet.

At the very end, just before he took the final step forward, he glanced over his shoulder. The figure was still there, Death's champion watching him closely and clinging to the remaining shadows as best he could.

"I won't remember this, will I?" Arian called out.

The figure nodded at him, and the reply felt like it was coming straight into his soul rather than across the space between them. "Some of the words will stay with you, but the rest will fade until you return here for the last time."

With that, the figure dissolved into a cloud of black feathers, and – without another word – Arian turned and continued walking straight into the light.

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on Twitter. (https://twitter.com/settiai)


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